Ron Paul, taking a brief respite from sending out fundraising email blasts for Tea Party candidates, has injected himself back into the national debate by weighing in on the NYC Mosque blather. Paul here takes the correct libertarian position on the matter, regarding it fundamentally as a matter of property rights and freedom of religion/speech. Paul then wraps his analysis in a more libertarian class critique, writing unequivocally that is an effort to gin up communitarian 2 minutes of hate to continue fueling the government organs of perpetual war.
Paul has been pretty much been universally condemned as a lapdog for Feisal Abdul Rauf on the conservative side.
On the progressive side, reaction has been mixed. Digby takes this as an opportunity to slam Paul over property rights and his opposition to the stimulus and to compose yet another rant against libertarians. She then writes that only the progressive left has been principled on this issue and appeals to a statement by Senator Merkley as the best exemplar of this principled stand. Merkely, in part, however makes an appeal to George Bush’s WTC ruins Bullhorn speech that was actually a call to War. Merkley, who was in the Oregon Legislator at the time of the Iraq War, voted for “Oregon House Resolution 2” which in part stated:
[we] (1) Acknowledge the courage of President George W. Bush, the President’s cabinet and the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States, and express our support for the victorious removal of Saddam Hussein from power; and
(2) Praise the courage, dedication, professionalism and sacrifices of the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States and their families in the defense of freedom.
Merkley’s consistent position over time has been one of typical left-communitarian claptrap. Give lip-service to the fundamental rights of any given group, and then support official actions that unleash massive and lethal state violence against such groups.
The likes of Digby think the Mosque controversy is one of fundamental importance as a battle between left-communitarianism vs right-communitarianism. Not it’s not. It’s a distraction; it’s a symptom. The issue here is permanent war and this has been recognized by Ron Paul, to his credit, from the start.
Lawrence O’Donnell, however, in substituting for Olbermann, used the first segment of Countdown to explore why Ron Paul is the only politician to give a clear and forceful statement on the issue. The reason is because he is applying libertarian principles to cut through the communitarian claptrap and identify the real issue of class war.
Libérale et libertaire 